


In arduis fidelis

by Wonko



Category: Holby City
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, sorry Elinor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-30 06:20:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12102627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wonko/pseuds/Wonko
Summary: It’s warm, so much warmer than she remembers; skin to skin, mouth to mouth, heart to heart. She thinks perhaps it’s a defense mechanism, forgetting this feeling - like mothers forgetting the pain of childbirth - because if she’d truly remembered the taste of Serena, the warmth of her touch, the absolute rightness of her body, how could she have borne these last months without going mad?





	In arduis fidelis

**Author's Note:**

> _In arduis fidelis_ is the motto of the Royal Army Medical Corps and means 'faithfulness in adversity.'

When they take away her Trauma Unit, Bernie knows the last thing tying her to Holby has gone. Knows that she’s just been waiting there, suspended like a fly in amber, hoping that one day Serena will breeze in, larger than life as always, and things will go back to how they were in those brief weeks between November and January, when they were happy.

She supposes the brevity of their happiness is some sort of cosmic justice for her many failures. She has to think that, because the thought that it was all essentially random is too cruel to bear.

On the day her unit closes, Bernie finally admits what she’s secretly believed for months. Serena isn’t coming back. Not to Holby; not to her.

So she calls up her old CO and he pulls some strings and she finds herself with a new RAMC contract, orders to ship out in mid-September, and an invitation from Serena to spend the last five weeks of her civilian life with her in Uzès.

She’s going back to the only life other than the one she had with Serena that ever made sense to her. The contract is technically only until February; a short term thing to train field medics in Sudan, to give them the benefit of her vast experience and world-renowned technique. But she doesn’t think she’ll be coming back to Holby either.

So she takes a final trip around the town. Visits Albie’s, takes in a solo lunch at an Italian restaurant with an extensive wine list, walks over a bridge where she and Serena had kissed one cold, crisp night under a full moon, and laughed together to be so in love. Says goodbye to Jason, tells him she loves him. He tells her she’s a very logical person and that if he were to apply to Pointless he’d choose her as his partner, and she knows that for him those things add up to loving her back.

She visits Elinor’s grave and stays for a long time, saying nothing, but staring intently at the stone and its epitaph: _Beloved daughter of Serena and Edward._

When her farewell tour of all the places that matter is over she calls up her kids and treats them to a night out in London. They go to a Belgian restaurant that Charlotte likes where they sell mussels and frites and beer. She tells them where she’s going and one of the reasons why: that she’s a trauma surgeon and that she trained for this job to help people, not to worry about NHS budgets and bureaucracy. She doesn’t say that she’s drowning, lost and alone in a sea of grief and doubt and that Serena is the only person who could throw her a life vest. She doesn’t say that she’s been waiting for that for months, treading water, desperately trying to keep breathing, but that no help has come. She doesn’t say she’s latching on to the only other chance of land she has in this bleak existence. But she thinks they know, anyway.

Her gut is in knots as she boards the Eurostar and has not remotely unclenched by the time she arrives at the Gare du Nord. She’s booked a hire car for the last seven hundred or so kilometres of her journey. It’ll be getting dark by the time she gets to Serena’s cottage, the sun setting so much earlier this far south than at home.

Except Holby isn’t home anymore, she thinks. Perhaps it hasn’t been ever since Serena left. Perhaps she’s been a down and out all that time and it’s taken her this long to realise it.

There are delays on the drive; roadworks in a couple of places, sheep on the road once, and a nasty accident that she stops at to see if she can help, but medics are already on the scene and she’s just in the way. Every extra second she hasn’t accounted for ramps up her anxiety and by the time she pulls up outside Serena’s house she is nauseous and breathless and tachycardic. She has to stay in the car for five long minutes, shaking in the driver’s seat, trying desperately to remember what you’re meant to do when you’re having a panic attack.

The passenger door opens. “Breathe,” says a beloved voice. A familiar hand slides over her back. “It’s all right, darling. Everything’s all right now.”

And Bernie breaks. It’s too much and she’s been strong for too long and Serena is _there_ , with her throaty voice and soft skin and her scent like home and Bernie thinks she’s dying of love and loss and longing.

Serena holds her as she weeps and says nothing, no nonsense words of comfort, no more lies about it being all right. It’s awkward; Bernie’s seatbelt is still on and the gearstick is digging into her side, but wild horses wouldn’t be able to make her move. She realises suddenly how touch starved she is; how long it’s been since anyone held her. She allows herself to soak these moments in, lets Serena’s warmth and familiarity begin to suture closed the open wound that is her heart.

“Sorry,” she sniffs after a long time. It’s dark now and the moon has risen. The stars are out, the only witnesses to this reunion.

Serena smiles. “Oh, Bernie,” she whispers, and ghosts her fingers over the planes of her face like she’s trying to memorise her by touch. “I’ve so missed you.”

Bernie’s breath catches and she nearly starts a new round of tears. “Really?”

A frown creases Serena’s beautiful face. “You really don’t know?” she breathes. Her eyes are soft and kind, so like her old self that Bernie feels almost weak under their steady gaze. She feels Serena loosening her seatbelt, feels her take her hand. “Let me show you.”

Serena takes her to bed. The room is cosy, low-ceilinged, decorated with dark woods and shiraz-red bedding. There are candles lit on every available surface, rose petals strewn on the pillows. Serena undresses her slowly, her eyes dark and intense, drinking her in like a fine wine.

When they are both naked at last, Serena takes her trembling hand again and holds it over her heart. “I’ve missed you,” she says again, and Bernie feels the truth of it thumping under her fingertips.

“I’m here,” she says, and takes Serena into her arms and kisses her.

It’s warm, so much warmer than she remembers; skin to skin, mouth to mouth, heart to heart. She thinks perhaps it’s a defense mechanism, forgetting this feeling - like mothers forgetting the pain of childbirth - because if she’d truly remembered the taste of Serena, the warmth of her touch, the absolute rightness of her body, how could she have borne these last months without going mad? She’s drunk on her now, tasting her lips, then her cheek, then the pale column of her throat before returning again and again to her mouth, bestowing wet, open kisses that seem to want to devour the other woman, to absorb her and combine them into one being.

She feels the back of her knees hit the bed and falls backwards, pulling Serena with her. Somehow they manage to do this almost gracefully. There’s no awkward fumbling, just warmth and softness and curves finding the places where they’ve always met.

Serena tears her lips away from their endless kiss and lowers her face to her neck, her shoulder, her clavicle. Bernie feels tears christening her skin.

It’s the first time they’ve done this since Elinor died.

“We don’t have to-” she begins to say, but Serena shakes her head.

“I want to,” she whispers. “I want you. I want you so much.”

So Bernie relaxes and lets Serena have her way, lets her do whatever she wants. What she wants is to worship Bernie’s body with hands and lips and teeth, to kiss every scar marking her pale skin, to make her shiver and tremble and gasp. She wants to run her fingers through messy golden hair, to kiss her way down a shuddering body, to settle between her thighs and take a leisurely taste. She wants to make Bernie come, and she does, with an aching familiarity and tenderness that makes Bernie’s breath catch and her heart race.

And then she lets Bernie have her way, and it turns out that what Bernie wants to do is to lie half covering Serena, tangling their lips together, one hand cradling her lover’s shoulders and the other between her legs, fingers inside her, stroking and thrusting and fluttering until Serena gasps and shudders and moans into her mouth.

 _I love you_ , she wants to say. The words are in her throat, stuck there like a peach stone. But she can’t let them out, not after the way Serena spat them back at her on that last day in the hospital together. Not now she’s going to Sudan. Not when these weeks are probably their last to be together like this.

So she loves and is silent, cradling Serena’s head on her chest, trying to memorise this warm, safe, happy feeling and knowing that the memory of it will never do it justice.

She wakes alone sometime in the night. Serena is sitting naked in the window seat, looking out at the night sky. Her face is pensive but otherwise unreadable, but she smiles when Bernie rises and comes to sit with her.

“Hello,” she says, her voice smoky and truffle-smooth.

“Hi,” Bernie replies, her lips curling into a small smile.

Serena gazes at her, her eyes dark. “I think I waited all my life to say hello to you,” she says. “Fifty years, a marriage, a career, a...a child...I thought nothing could surprise me anymore. And then you strolled in, all awkward charm and stubbornness. And stole my heart.”

There is a long silence during which they both breathe the sweet night air and listen to the sounds of crickets and owls out in the darkness. “You stole mine,” Bernie says at last.

And suddenly the distance between them is too much so they stand and hold each other and kiss and return to bed and make love again until the horizon is tinged pink with the coming dawn.

“Has there,” Serena begins, not quite meeting Bernie’s eyes. “Has there been...anyone else? Since I’ve been gone?” She quickly adds: “I don’t mind.”

Bernie’s stomach tightens. Has Serena been with someone else? Why else would she be asking?

She starts to pull away, but Serena holds on. Bernie sighs. Sadness seeps into her bones, deadening all the light her night with Serena has brought. “No,” she says, her voice flat. “There’s no-one else.”

She feels rather than hears Serena’s answering sob and turns her head back around. Serena is crying and smiling at the same time and her face can’t seem to decide which emotion it wants to express. “Oh, Bernie, my darling,” she breathes. “I know I’ve got no right...no right at all, but...thank God, thank God, thank God…”

She surges forward and kisses her, tears of joy and relief washing down her face and Bernie feels a sudden wave of hope crest and break in her chest.

“Serena,” she whispers fiercely. “As long as you are in this world, there will be no-one else for me. I promise.” She wants to say more, like how Serena is the light of her life, her shining star, her eternally burning flame, but at the end of the day she’s not a romantic, or a poet - she’s Bernie Wolfe, terminally British, army to the core, and she lets her body say what her lips can’t.

They spend the whole day and the next night in bed, relearning each other’s movements and sounds, reconnecting, coming home. The next day they get in the car and go for a drive to the coast where they walk hand in hand through the narrow streets of a fishing village, drinking in the warm feeling of being together and alive. In the evening they eat in a small seafood restaurant and drink red wine, much to the chagrin of the sommelier who looks at them like they’re savages. Serena laughs about him as they walk along the beach later, her hand resting in Bernie’s like it was made for it.

They stop after a while and listen to the waves, Bernie wrapping her arms around Serena from behind as they listen to the sound of pebbles and sand scraping up and down the darkened beach.

“Ah, love,” says Serena. “Let us be true to one another.”

Before Bernie can ask what she means, Serena turns in her arms. “Will you marry me?” she says gently.

The waves rise and fall and rise again five times before Bernie can speak. “Wh...what did you say?”

Serena smiles. “Major Berenice Griselda Wolfe,” she says seriously. “Will you marry me?”

Bernie’s first instinct is to pull away, to bolt, but she deliberately stamps down on that feeling and pulls Serena close. “Why are you asking me?” she says softly.

Serena kisses her neck, taking her pulse with her lips. “Because I love you,” she says, and Bernie dimly realises that this is the first time Serena has said it properly; the actual words. “Because I’ve realised over the past months that I can survive without you, but I don’t want to. Because I left England to find myself, to find out who I am now that I’m...that I’m not a mother anymore.” Bernie holds her tighter, feels her body tense then relax. “And what I’ve found is this. That I love you. That you make me a better person. That I want to be with you and take care of you and love you for the rest of my life.”

Bernie is crying and smiling and trying not do either. “I’m going to Sudan,” she says, her voice cracking with emotion.

Serena shrugs. “Whither thou goest…” she says, and Bernie’s surprised, joyous laughter mingles with the sound of the crashing waves.

“I love you, Serena,” she says, and feels the last knot of tension she didn’t even know she was carrying suddenly melt away.

So Serena calls Jason and asks him to go to their houses to collect the paperwork they’ll need: birth certificates, records of prior marriages and divorces. Serena has already requested and received proof of her eligibility to marry from the British embassy - “you were planning this?” Bernie had asked when she found out, and Serena had simply replied: “I hoped.” Bernie plays the serving soldier about to deploy and desperate to marry the love of her life card and receives a similar statement from the embassy within a few days. They visit the local _mairie_ together and make the application. The banns are published and then it’s just a matter of waiting four weeks. The timing will be tight but they manage to book a date just a few days before Bernie’s scheduled departure.

They fill the time travelling round Provence, visiting vineyards and ancient châteaux, talking and laughing together, making love, kissing, adoring each other.

Cameron, Charlotte and Jason fly over for the day itself to be their guests and witnesses. Bernie doesn’t think her heart has ever been fuller, and only the fact that there is one person missing, one person who’ll forever be missing, can dull her joy. But Serena smiles and shakes her head when she tries to mention Elinor, so she just takes her hand and holds tight.

Serena wears a wine-red dress, long and sleeveless, and heels that bring her up just enough that she and Bernie are eye to eye. Bernie wears her dress uniform and regimental hat. The burgundy stripe on it matches the colour of Serena’s dress, and Bernie wonders if that’s intentional, wonders how long Serena has been imagining this day.

The ceremony itself is a blur. All Bernie can remember of it afterwards are Serena’s shining eyes, her smiling lips, the light in that lovely face she so adores.

After it’s over, after they’re actually _married_ , Serena takes Bernie’s hands. The ceremony had been in French, but now she speaks her vows in English.

“I promise to love you and cherish you for the rest of my life,” she says. “I promise to take care of you and let you take care of me. I promise that when things are hard I will run towards you, not away. I promise to be faithful and true. I promise never to leave you again.” She smiles tremulously, tightens her grip on Bernie’s hands.

Bernie is silent for a long moment. She’s not good with words, never has been; she’s always let her actions speak for her. But in this moment she wants to find the perfect words, the right words that will tell Serena how she feels.

“In arduis fidelis,” she says, and kisses her.

They have two days to enjoy married civilian life before the date on Bernie’s orders rolls round. They spend the entire time in bed, memorising each other. But the day comes at last, so they pack, lock up the house, leave the keys with the owner, take a last lingering walk around the town.

The drive to the airport in Paris takes eight hours. They share the driving, singing along to songs on the radio, holding hands between gear changes. Bernie’s CO is waiting for them when they arrive. She salutes him. “Major Berenice Wolfe reporting for duty, sir,” she says, then pulls Serena close to her. “This is my wife, Serena,” she adds softly, flushing with pleasure at the sound of that word _wife_ in her mouth.

“Ah,” he says, “this is the vascular surgeon who’s joining us as a civilian contractor, hmm?”

“That’s right,” Serena says. “Looking forward to working with you.”

Bernie beams at her, her whole body radiating happiness.

They’re going to serve out the contract until February and then leave. They’re not sure where they’re going after that - perhaps back to France, perhaps to Holby - but it doesn’t matter. They’ll have each other. Bernie rubs her thumb against the new ring on the fourth finger of her left hand.

Their flight is called. Bernie picks up Serena’s bag for her, ever the gentleman, and holds out her hand. Serena takes it, smiles. They walk into their future hand in hand.

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of poems were the inspiration for this - [You](https://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/you) by Carol Ann Duffy and [Dover Beach](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43588/dover-beach) by Matthew Arnold, which Serena quotes just before she proposes.


End file.
